Monday, Monday. Remember my Mexican friends that if you need any Cloudberry Records, please let me know by Wednesday because I’m traveling on Friday to your beautiful country. That means too that I won’t be updating the blog for the time I will be away on holidays. Maybe that would be a good time for everyone that needs to catch up with the crazy amount of indiepop archaeology I’ve been doing this whole 2018.

But it is not just old and obscure pop that I want to feature. As always I try to find 5 good new finds for you all. So here they are:

Loose Tooth: just found out about this Melbourne based band. It seems I’m late at the party as they have some other releases listed on their Bandcamp, the oldest dating from 2015. But it doesn’t matter. The thing is they have a new album called “Keep Up” and they have a video for the opening song of the album called “Keep Up” available now to promote the record! The album is to be released on August 3rd on yellow vinyl on Milk! Records. The trio is formed by Etta Curry, Nellie Jackson and Luc Dawson and I’m looking forward to getting my hands on this record, even if I don’t know how the rest of the songs sound like!

The Loneliers: a girl punk/twee band from Brooklyn and Queens, New York. Would that mean that they are on the L train, somewhere in Ridgewood and Bushwick? Would that be a safe assumption? Maybe not! According to their Facebook they are based in East Elmhurst. Anyhow, the band has just uploaded a new song to their Bandcamp called “Sunblock” and it is a rush of pure fun guitar pop. Who are they? It is the first time I listen to them even though I live in the same city, in Queens too. They are a trio formed by Jessie Rodriguez, Debbie Rodriguez and Caitlin McMullen, and they have Go Sailor as one of their influences. That is a good thing in my book!

Dead Little Penny: some fuzzy guitar pop from Auckland, New Zealand? Why not! This band, formed in 2013 by Hayley Smith and Simon Buxton have an EP from 2016 and a new song, from April this year, on their Bandcamp. I stumbled upon them thanks to their latest, that is called “Honeycomb”. It is indeed very fuzzy, the way the band describes themselves and they seem to be signed to a label called Wood Lane.

Our Girl: where from did this very good track called “In My Head” came from? From this Brighton, UK, band that doesn’t play at Indietracks but it is playing the Benicassim festival in Spain. Some things don’t make sense. This is the first time I’m listening to this trio but it does look like they have more than a handful of songs in their Bandcamp. This one is the latest though, dating from June 22nd. It is only available digitally, but I hope it gets released physically as they did back in 2016 with their “Normally EP”.

E’spaniel: one of my favourite jangly pop bands from the UK is back with their debut album called “Entra Solo”. The 10 song CD is now available directly from the band. I need a copy of course. It sounds brilliant to me! They just had a launch party at the Cumberland Arms in Newcastle and I hope it was a success. Why are they not playing at Indietracks? Well that is the big mystery to me. So many good UK bands, they should book some of them! I hope this release gets some good attention, because this band formed by Christianne, Leon and Karen, has the right influences, the songs, the lyrics and the melodies. I’m very much enjoying this on Bandcamp right now!

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I own two out of the three singles The Impossibles released in the early 90s. But for some reason I never thought about finding out more information about them. Going through my collection always turns to be a surprise: records I don’t remember having, some rarities, some with set lists I’ve saved within the sleeve, others signed by the bands and so on. This time around The Impossibles caught my attention and when I looked for them on Discogs I was surprised that there was a 3rd single I was not aware of.

That’s why I started looking for any information that is available about them. Discogs describes the band as a mellow electronic/indie dance act from the early 1990s. All of these singles were released on one label, Fontana. Fontana was a label that was founded in 1957 by PPI in the USA as a vehicle to market recordings licensed from Epic outside of the US. It was launched in 1958 in the UK. It was a big label, with Universal Music Group as its parent label. They had money. So it would be interesting to know the relationship of the band and the label. And how come the band only released singles and not an album.

The label lists two band members, two girls, Lucy Dallas and Mags Gundy. It doesn’t look like they were involved in any other bands. Strange.

The band’s first 7″ was released in 1990 and we can clearly see the backing of a biggish label, it came out on 7″, 12″ and CD single. The 7″ included just two songs, “How Do You Do It?” on the A side and “Privilege” on the B side. The A side was produced by Chris Sheldon, a producer who had been in punk bands in the late 70s. The B side, and this might be of interest of many, was produced by My Bloody Valentine’s own Kevin Shields. The sleeve design is credited to Abraham Pants, a UK design studio, while the photography to Paul Cox.

The 12″ on the other hand included two more songs. Now both songs from the 7″ appear on the A side while the B side includes “Expect Poison From Standing Water” and “Tar Pit”. All songs by the way were written by Dallas and Grundy but “Tar Pit” which was written by J. Mascis for Dinousaur Jr. The tracklist repeats itself on the CD single.

All these different formats were going to be used for the next single, 1991’s “Delphis”. The 7″ again included two songs, “Delphis” on the A side and “Be My Baby” on the B side. The songs were both recorded by Matthew Vaughn and the A side was engineered by Mark Stent. The artwork is credited to Gus Campbell for the painting and John Warwicker and Vivid ID for the design.

This time for the 12″ the tracklist changes completely. The original “Delphis” is the opening track, but the rest of them are remixes. On A2 we find “Delphis (Terry Farley & Pete Heller Remix)”. The B side had “Delphis (Fluke Remix)” and “Delphis (Inner Space Mix)”. The CD single version has the same running order.

Their last single, “The Drum”, was also released in 1991 and once again it was released in the three different formats. It looks like the band was getting support by the label. The 7″ had two songs, “The Drum” and “Our Love is God”. The 12″ was to open the A side with “The Drum (12″ Mix)”, which was a remix by Andrew Weatherall assisted by Hugo Nicolson, and have the original version of “The Drum” as A2. The B side had “Our Love is God” and “Therapy?”. The CD included the same songs but in a different order, first was the original “The Drum”, then “Our Love is God”, “Therapy?” and “The Drum (12″ Mix)”.

There are a few interesting bits about “The Drum”. First it was a cover of the Slapp Happy original which was later also covered by Bongwater, changing a bit the lyrics. It is the Bongwater’s version that The Impossibles covered.  And there is a promo video of this song where we meet the two girls in black and white.

It seems there have been other bands with the same name, but from what I gather from some forum post the band was based in Edinburgh, Scotland, despite both Mags and Lucy hailing from the north of England. It seems at some point the band expanded to a 4 piece with Ian Jackson (bass) and Gary Macintosh (drums) joining them. It seems both of them had been previously playing in local bands like the Van Cleefs and the Press Darlings.

There is not much more about them on the web. I don’t understand how Mags and Lucy disappeared. How come they weren’t in any other bands. The songs they wrote and how the were singing them was brilliant! Sure, it must have been difficult with a big label, but maybe there was demos and other recordings by this band? Did they play live much? All around the UK? Who remembers them?

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Listen
The Impossibles – How Do You Do It?